HOUSING AND SUBURBAN DEVELOPMENT, 1974-2000
Although Chester's population was falling from 1971, (fn. 4)
house-building continued apace, mostly in the private
sector. By 1991 there were over 33,000 houses in the
urban wards, of which 68 per cent were owneroccupied. (fn. 5) Demand for housing in the city was led by
managers working in Merseyside, Greater Manchester,
and north Wales, and house prices in Chester were
consequently among the highest in the North-West, 14
per cent above the national average in 1992. (fn. 6)
One of the reasons for high house prices was the
shortage of building land on the outskirts of the city.
The district council remained committed to encouraging new residents into Chester, a principal reason for
its proposal in the mid 1990s to breach the green belt
south of the city. Local people also needed housing, in
part because of the greater number of single-person
households. The loss of residents within the city walls
was another matter of concern. In 1975 there were
c. 1,500 residents in the inner city, half the number in
1961. (fn. 7) To utilize existing space better and tempt
residents back, dwellings suited to professional and
single people and childless couples were created on the
upper floors of the Rows and other city-centre premises. Small housing units were also built within the
conservation area and on reclaimed land such as the
site of Northgate station west of Victoria Road, where
between 1985 and 1991 Northgate Village was built, (fn. 8)
with very small terraced houses and blocks of flats
grouped at high density round courts shared by
pedestrians and vehicles.
The council's ability to provide social housing was
severely limited by government financial restrictions.
In 1977 plans were made for a steady programme of
new building for families on the housing list and to
replace unfit dwellings. Government policies prevented
its completion, and land assigned for council houses
was later turned over to the private sector and housing
associations. Despite council co-operation with the
private sector, the waiting list continued to expand
beyond the 3,250 families needing accommodation in
1976. (fn. 9) The difficulty in remedying the situation was
exacerbated by the government's 'Right to Buy' policy
of 1980, which seriously depleted the existing housing
stock. Chester had been selling council houses since the
early 20th century, but until 1980 always built more
than it released. Between 1980 and 1993, however, the
stock fell by almost 2,000. By 1994 only 15.6 per cent
of the housing in Chester was council-owned, there
was a waiting list of 3,750 families, and 109 families
were homeless. Financial constraints also hindered the
refurbishment of older council houses. In 1993, for
example, over 3,000 of them lacked central heating,
and by 1994 some 3 per cent in the district as a whole
were reported unfit for human habitation and 74 per
cent in need of much improvement; the government,
however, would not approve the 10-year investment
programme of £8.3 million a year said to be required. (fn. 10)
Private house-building for families with the highest
incomes followed the pattern established in the 1950s.
Most took place within or as extensions to existing
suburbs, and only a little in small groups on greenfield
sites. Typical in its North American-influenced style was
a development off Eaton Road in the 1970s and 1980s of
detached houses with open front lawns. More original
was Claverton Court, built in Queen's Park c. 1980 for
the Architects' Benevolent Fund to designs by Brock
Carmichael, and extended in 2000. (fn. 1) The only distinguished individual house built in Chester after 1974
was the Schreiber House off Eaton Road, designed
c. 1983 by James Gowan as a post-modern fusion
between the ideas of Le Corbusier and Palladio. (fn. 2)
Houses for a slightly lower income group were built in
far greater numbers, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s.
The main concentrations were around the southern
perimeter of the Lache estates, and south of Great
Boughton in the angle between Chester Road and the
Chester southerly bypass (A55). The planning principles
followed national trends: at Great Boughton a spine
road (Caldy Valley Road) was laid out to serve separate
closes of mainly small detached houses on cramped
plots. Each group was developed individually by a large
house-builder. The architectural styles adopted were
conservative, embracing neo-vernacular, neo-Georgian,
and by the later 1990s neo-Victorian. At Great
Boughton a Sainsbury's supermarket and a retail park
formed part of the development. During the 1990s there
were a few schemes on brownfield sites, for example a
block of flats and some houses on a former factory site
south of Overleigh Road, Handbridge, and an extensive
area of flats and houses, eclectic in style, designed by
Jane Derbyshire and David Kendall for Bryant Homes
on the site of the Royal Infirmary west of the inner ringroad. Some new housing was tucked into spaces within
the city centre, for example a modest terrace behind
King Street and two schemes by Robin Clayton between
Duke Street and the city walls, but few of those
developments were architecturally noteworthy. (fn. 3) The
most distinctive new housing was probably Salmon's
Leap, designed in 1976 by Gilling Dod and Partners for a
restricted site close to the river in Handbridge, (fn. 4) and the
discreet infill designed to Donald Insall and Associates'
concept as part of the rehabilitation of Lower Bridge
Street, such as Insall's houses of the early 1980s in Castle
Street, Castle Place, and St. Mary's Hill. (fn. 5)